Tent, a teacher of middle-school mathematics, helps young readers understand how unusual it was for Emmy Noether to earn a doctorate from the U. of Erlangen in 1907, a time when women were expected to become wives and mothers. With what little oral and written material about Noether that is available, Tent also describes Noether's life in Germany, where she developed ground-breaking mathematical concepts, and in America, where she taught at Bryn Mawr College for a short time before her death in 1935. Tent imaginatively describes Noether's family, her working relationships with men such as Albert Einstein, and her ways of dealing with a world and a field that both found her to be rather odd. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)